Saturday, March 24, 2007

Why Global Warming is Not a Problem

He is driving to your place, screaming obscenties about your loved ones, at 90 miles an hour. And he's going to disembowl your kitten.

This is what our minds register as a "problem". It has a face, it violates our moral sensibilities, it's happening RIGHT NOW, and it's happening QUICKLY. That's how human brains are wired.

If Fritz were about to eviscerate your kitten with global warming, instead of his big knife, global warming would be a problem.

But the truth is, global warming has no face, it's happening gradually, the news about what it's doing to the planet RIGHT NOW (as opposed to 30 or 50 or 100 years from now) goes ignored or unreported, and we're not really that concerned about the millions of people already suffering and dying from its effects because our moral sensibilities are dulled by distance, disaster fatigue, worry about how to pay the Visa bill, and the fact that we don't know them personally. And they're gonna die anyway, so, whatever.

This suggests that global warming really ISN'T a problem. The way our brains are wired is the problem. So I'm willing to meet the problem halfway.